Jewler's Clock Cypher

Jeweler's Clock Cipher

OVERVIEW

The Jeweler's Clock Cipher was designed to engage participants with the history of one of New York City's lost and forgotten jeweler's clocks. Decorative street clocks of various forms were often placed on sidewalks to attract business, especially jewelry stores. While few of the shops that invested in them still survive, the clocks themselves are portals to a forgotten era. Atlas Obscura's Field Trip Day 2013 aimed to bring Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood into focus, and what better way to do that than to make a game about one of it's stalwart relics.

PUZZLE CONCEPT

One day, Bomelstien was working in his shop and a musician came in. He had the strangest story about his day at orchestra practice that day. While practicing, he totally forgot the name of the composer of the piece they were playing. Just as they were tuning the orchestra his mind went blank. Can you help find the name of the composer?

CIPHER LOGIC

D - 50-27 = 23 (which is the number of letters from the end of the alphabet where D comes up)

OR — A logical or gate. Either we should incorporate the || symbol somewhere on the card, or use the engineer's drawing of one. Looks like this

A — A is the musical note that orchestras tune to. We can just mention that the the musician forgot the composer's while the orchestra was tuning. An alternative is to use the number 440 hertz, as that is the number of hertz to produce A

K — 10 + 3, thirteenth letter of the alphabet. The clock hands are stuck at 10 an almost 3.